The German painter Franz Marc (1880-1916) was a cofounder of the Blaue Reiter, or Blue Rider, an influential avant-garde art group.

Franz Marc was born on Feb. 8, 1880, in Munich, the son of a painter. At the age of 20 Franz entered the Munich Academy, which had a strong academic tradition. His earliest works show the influence of the decorative, linear Jugendstil that flourished in his youth.

In 1903 Marc made his first trip to Paris, where he came into contact with impressionism. He had originally intended to become a theologian, and he now carried his religious inclinations into his pictorial investigations, treating the shapes of nature as images filled with secret meaning. He used certain cubist formal elements to imbue his art with a kind of mystical constructivism. The animal images for which he is best known are the expression of his deep union with all creation. In 1907, fleeing from...